The top 10 Alzheimer's deals tell us a lot about a big change of di­rec­tion for a dis­as­ter-prone field

A decade of dis­as­ters in Alzheimer’s R&D over the last 10 years — topped by the dis­as­trous and per­haps fi­nal fum­ble on the amy­loid be­ta line by Bio­gen — has done lit­tle to change bio­phar­ma’s ap­petite for risky clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment pro­grams. But it has start­ed to al­ter the se­lec­tion of pre­clin­i­cal ap­pe­tiz­ers main­stream play­ers are or­der­ing these days.

We asked Chris Doko­ma­ji­lar, the founder of Deal­For­ma, to run the num­bers on Alzheimer’s deals dat­ing back a decade. And what he found may sur­prise you.

Last year was by far the busiest on record for new Alzheimer’s deals, just as big plays by Mer­ck, Lil­ly and Roche were all head­ed to the same rocks that have claimed vir­tu­al­ly every­thing float­ed against this dis­ease in the last decade. Out of the 126 pacts he tracked over the dis­tance, 27 were struck in 2018. And 6 of the top 10 re­search deals of the decade — cal­cu­lat­ed by a to­tal of up­fronts and mile­stones — were all inked last year.

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